


and i've been meaning to tell you, i think your house is haunted

by LittleLostStar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: :squints at notes: ????ghost sex??????, F/M, Happy Ending, abandoned houses, also a little bit of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, based on "seven" by taylor swift, bed sharing across dimensions, dream logic and atmosphere, lots of feelings, mutual hauntings, this fic has house of leaves energy, tragedy and breakdowns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: Rey and Ben each arrive at a beachside house, one to repair and the other to destroy, each seeking salvation hung on memories of joy that might have been imagined.Or: Rey and Ben are each others' ghosts, and there's only one bed.~~~The first thing Rey did after she lost her mind was to buy a mattress. While initially seeming like an impulse buy, it kicked off a series of increasingly bewildering decisions that have ultimately led her to this moment; and as she lugs it up the stairs now, she finds herself smiling just a little.There is no such place as home, for her. She's always known that.But there's something about this house.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 19
Collections: Reylo Folklore Flash Fic





	and i've been meaning to tell you, i think your house is haunted

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there and hello! I am thrilled to be part of the Reylo Folklore flash fic collection; my piece is inspired by "seven", and I genuinely did not have "Taylor Swift inspires me to write a star wars fanfic while listening to the _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ score" on my 2020 bingo card, but here we are.
> 
> Eternal thanks to [thehobbem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobbem/pseuds/thehobbem) for being such a phenomenal beta editor! <3

The house is huge, imposing and dark, still standing out of sheer stubbornness; the shingles and slats are tethered together by a kind of exhausted resignation, as if they’re the last protons in the universe just waiting to decay. Rey’s stomach is in a tight knot as she picks her way across the debris-strewn floor of the front hall, glancing with dismay at the crystal chandelier hanging by a single threadbare cord overhead. The wallpaper has withered away to nothing, barely a sign of the lavish plum and navy hues that once graced the foyer; the staircase looks intact, at least, illuminated with the gauzy light coming from the window at the top of the landing.

_(“You can’t catch me!_ ”)

Rey shakes her head, turning to sneeze softly into her elbow as her footsteps kick up years-old layers of grime. She moves further into the house, her fingers leaving bright smudges in the dust clinging to the decaying balusters. If she squints, she can pick out where the paintings and photographs used to be; there are patches where the dust is slightly lighter, arranged in neat squares and rectangles on the walls. The plaster crumbles off the walls at the lightest touch; it seems like the whole place might collapse if Rey exhales too hard, and she finds herself holding her breath as her footsteps shudder through the creaking floorboards.

She climbs the stairs slowly, flattened against the wall to avoid the spots where the wood has fallen apart and wincing as splinters chip off the trim at the base of her spine and snag on her sweater. It seems like the house is simultaneously pushing her away and reeling her in. The second floor has suffered an entirely different sort of devastation, swelling and softening at the mercy of the stormy seaside weather. There's a doll's crib abandoned in a corner of a room with a huge hole in the floor where the wood has warped and rotted away, and the windowsills have almost all collapsed into sodden splinters and peeling paint. Only one of the bedrooms has any form of furniture: an ancient metal bed frame, the springs tangled and sharp-looking. The room is at the very apex of the second floor, at the end of a drafty hall of closets and broken windows. The floor is in decent shape, but a handful of pigeons have set up shop on the wide windowsills; they flutter away when Rey shoos them, but quickly circle back to what is undeniably their territory. She checks to make sure the nests are empty of eggs or chicks before shoving them off the sill, watching them tumble into the fog that’s swept in from the sea. She pulls the pane windows shut—half of them are broken anyway, but it's the principle of the thing—and folds her arms across her chest, setting her jaw as she takes it all in.

The fact of the matter is that Rey is on a doomed expedition, a spectacular downward spiral that has reached critical mass and gone supernova. She has nothing to her name, and after she’s finished she’ll have even less. The house isn't worth the materials it's built on; in fact, it's officially considered a detriment to the value of the plot, and any owner with an iota of good sense would have it demolished immediately. It’s all in shambles, like the photographs she’s seen of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: frozen, dead, decaying, untouched. Unloved. Unwanted. Unnecessary.

The wind rustles through the house; a door slams somewhere downstairs. The sound sends a ruffle of feathers beating against grimy glass as the pigeons take flight, and for a golden moment Rey lets herself imagine she isn't alone.

She begins by sweeping the rotted leaves and dead wasps out of the bedroom, filling one entire garbage bag with the assembled mess. There's no mould, thank god, but she's going to tear out the plaster anyhow; there's maybe two walls she's seen that won't need to be taken down to the studs and rebuilt anew. After a trip to her truck for her tools, Rey inspects the bed frame with meticulous care, testing each joint and craning her neck to check for rust in the tiniest corners. She finds a few weak points, but nothing weld can't fix; the frame is probably the least broken thing inside the house. It’s a good place to start, and she just so happens to have all the necessary equipment; Rey’s striding downstairs when the floor gives way beneath her feet, sending her sprawling across the main foyer and knocking the wind out of her. 

“Okay then,” she wheezes to herself as she sits up, “staircase first.”

Repairing the staircase takes the rest of the day; Rey brought a few cords of wood with her in a trailer she towed behind the Falcon, but she’s going to have to get more generators for the power tools; the portable table saw died midway through the afternoon, and Rey has hand-sawed so many planks in the last three hours that she’s pretty sure she’s given herself carpal tunnel. By the time she lugs the metalwork equipment up the newly sturdy staircase, the sun is disappearing over the horizon, casting a mirrored blush of saffron across the deep blue of the sea and sky. She does the rest of the work by the blazing light of the industrial lamp Luke gave her: scrubbing the flaking paint from the wrought iron headboard, cutting the springs out of the frame, and grinding the edges flush before setting up the welding machine. In the twilight, with sparks flying off into the endless gloom beyond her face shield, Rey slips into something like a trance as she methodically finds the weak points and strengthens them, until every joint and crossbeam stands firm across the frame. 

The first thing Rey did after she lost her mind was to buy a mattress. While initially seeming like an impulse buy, it kicked off a series of increasingly bewildering decisions that have ultimately led her to this moment; and as she lugs it up the stairs now, she finds herself smiling just a little.

There is no such place as home, for her. She's always known that. 

But there's something about this house. There are still beautiful things here.

( _"—let me go!"_ )

Rey rolls her sleeping bag out onto the mattress and flops onto it, her boots dangling off the side of the bed as she closes her eyes and allows herself a single, deep breath. She searches the dark void behind her eyelids for the spidersilk-thin thread of familiarity as it weaves in and out of her consciousness; she imagines it winding through the house, slithering under doors and through keyholes faster than she can chase it.

 _I’m here,_ she thinks to herself, furrowing her brow. _So why can't I see your face?_

All things considered, there are worse places to run away to.

Ben has alienated himself away from the world in several choice locations during the course of his life, and he has to admit that the seaside house is probably the most atmospheric out of all of them—with apologies to that one library in Portugal with the bat colony and the original copy of _The Chronicle of Dom Afonso Henrique_ s. It was deeply atmospheric, a truly grandiose choice for a complete breakdown, and ultimately worth the lifetime ban; but it pales in comparison to this rickety old house by the sea. 

It should feel creepy, he knows, but this is how self-destructive tragedies tend to unfold; the first act is always the easiest, shaded with bittersweet optimism that will only make the coming hardships sting even worse.

The trees around the house are all overgrown, with ivy clinging desperately to the corners and eavestroughs, the leaves whispering like paper butterflies with each gust of wind. The porch creaks underfoot, and he has to throw his weight into the door before it finally lurches open. Ben stumbles inside to find the furniture all covered in white sheets; it's as if he's interrupted a seance, the ghosts now frozen in a tableau of wretched effort, stuck halfway through their attempts to evoke the human-shaped emotions they once felt. He takes a swig from the flask of vodka that's been sitting warm against his chest, and it tastes like lifeblood—bitter and metallic.

( _"Where are you?"_ )

It's an echo of an echo, a microscopic flash of divinity, just a soupçon of utter madness. Not even a voice, not even a memory—except for how familiar it all feels.

Ben continues to wander the first floor rooms, his feet dragging through the dust as he nips at the vodka and the edges of his vision start to blur. He impassively tugs the sheets off the furniture, wrinkling his nose at the smell of years of accumulated stillness and leaving the cloths in scattered heaps wherever they fall. There were beautiful things here, once, but they’ve crumbled into the dust that gathers in heaps around each door and corner. He stops in front of the fancy marble fireplace in the living room, squinting into the murky gloom at the large patch of bare wall above the mantle, where he can see the outline of where a large frame once sat, like an atomic shadow. He takes another drink and imagines the portrait that might have been there once upon a time, tries to see her face in the chaotic topography of the roughshod bricks. 

_Whose face? Why? Where? When?_

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. 

The house is deathly silent, but for the crashing waves on the shore outside the windows and the equally insistent heartbeat crashing against his ribs, syncopated rhythms that never quite click into standard time. Ben keeps wandering, stepping over some of the drop clothes he’s discarded as he makes his way through the kitchen—all loose tiles and blackened grout in between—and through the enclosed porch, the daylight coming dim through the layers of leaves and detritus that have collected on the roof. It’s a miracle none of the windows are broken. 

As if to punctuate the sentiment, Ben grabs the nearest heavy thing—a heavy stone statue of a frog—and hurls it through one of the floor-to-ceiling glass panes, sucking air through his teeth as shards fall like diamonds and a blast of cold air hits his face. He waits, but the house doesn’t retaliate; no one comes running at the noise, and nothing descends to stop him. So, with another long drink, Ben does it again, this time grabbing a loose table leg and swinging it over and over, until the enclosed porch is nothing but white metal frame and crunching shards of glass underfoot. A gust of wind blows one of the wicker chairs on its side, and he lands a poorly-aimed kick at it, sending it tumbling out into the yard where it lands facedown in supplication. Once upon a time, Ben Solo was the kind of person who might feel bad for mistreating a chair; now he doesn’t even give it a second thought, turning away and draining the last of the flask before the emotion he’s recently identified as _remorse_ can rise and consume him. Because Ben isn’t angry anymore. He isn’t fighting. He is doing everything he tried his whole life to avoid, and now that he’s here at rock bottom he’s starting to wonder what he was so afraid of all this time. He is a broken person, doomed to break over and over again. When other people reach out, he just ends up breaking them, too. So now he’s here, to break himself and everything around him, and hopefully this time it’s for good. He has no plan after this. 

_("—never leave, promise me—_ ")

Snoke used to tell him that nostalgia was for weak-willed men, that reminiscing was as good as lying down and waiting to die. And, as always, in the end he’s technically right. 

Ben lets his feet carry him up the stairs, following a memory that has been locked into his muscles but entirely shut out of his mind. At first he’s resigned, a sagging puppet pulled by tangled strings; this isn't the first time that he's rediscovered someplace that he'd forgotten, and it rarely ends with anything good.

But despite everything, this doesn't feel like one of those times.

He pushes open the ajar door at the end of the hall to find that there’s a bed inside: the wrought iron frame seems to gleam in the sunlight, and the mattress on top is crisp and clean, partially covered with a neatly unrolled sleeping bag that's going to be too small for him.

 _What?_

There’s no one else here. He’s been sure of that; he hasn’t spoken to anyone, hasn’t seen anyone, hasn’t told anyone his plans. The gate showed no signs of tampering when he pulled up to the house; the ancient padlock squeaked painfully when he tried to work the key. No one has entered this property in years and years. 

"Hello?" Ben yells, his voice swallowed up by the thick wooden walls. He takes the stairs faster than he should and trips over one of the dropcloths, landing on the floor with a loud _slam_ —

— _it was your house, but just for the summer. It had been in your family for generations, much older and sturdier than it looked from the outside. The sun shone on the hardwood and made everything seem warm and still; you could jump off the porch steps and hit the ground clean every time. We used to chase each other through the halls, until your parents yelled; then you would take my hand and show me a secret, a crawlspace or a false hallway, something that seemed impossible. Like magic._

(yes. and what then?)

_We would race across the beach. I always let you win._

(what else do you remember?)

_It was a party, where we met; we snuck sips of champagne and made fun of all the fancy hats people wore. You were hiding from your parents; I thought you didn’t like them, but you spoke about them with such unwavering intensity, such admiration and frustration in equal measure, and I found himself enchanted. That's just what you do, you know. You're enchanting—_

It's hard work, but Rey doesn't mind; being alone is something of a specialty for her. Plus, with Skywalker bringing supplies every week, she's definitely stretching the definition of _alone_ at least a little bit; she knows better than most that there are much darker depths of loneliness than this, an entire abyssal zone where the sun has never shone. One dilapidated house and a kamikaze mission of impossible repair are a relative cakewalk by comparison.

Clearing out the debris takes less time than Rey thought it would; despite the sheer amount of loose material, the floors and walls are in better shape than they really should be, all things considered. She repairs the major weak points on the upper and lower floors first, so she doesn't have to worry about the ground collapsing beneath her when she's trying to drag heavy stuff around. The last thing she needs right now is to lose momentum.

Skywalker insists on helping her with the electricity and plumbing repairs, and Rey knows better than to protest; he's not one for conversation either, so it's a comfortable silence when they work, and absolutely worth it when Rey can roll into bed with the lights on overhead and the old metal heaters rattling to life.

Sometimes, in a tangle of copper wire or a heap of plaster dust, she thinks she sees his face. It's stronger, now that Rey's in the house; there's always a portion of her mind dedicated to trying to fit the pieces together, to holding them in her memory, but there are too many tiny shifting little components: a fascinatingly aquiline nose, deep brown eyes gazing out from a dramatic brow, a sharp jaw casting a shadow like the dark side of a mountain peak. Rey snaps awake with the afterimages already fading from her mind, and she clenches her hands into her quilt as she tries in vain to grasp onto the details.

( _"—cross my heart and hope to—"_ )

She keeps working: lathes out new balusters one by one until her shoulders seize from crouching over the machine, grouts tiles with fingers that crack and bleed from all the dust. The bedroom becomes her home base, a microcosm of how the rest of the house will look when Rey’s finished: new insulation, clean crisp drywall painted dark blue, gleaming floors and tight-fitting windows. It's a royal pain in the ass to break out all the tools for one single room, but it helps to have a little slice of the finished product she can tentatively imagine calling _home_.

Despite all of Rey's best intentions, she suspects that the house is not terribly pleased with her presence. The wind continues to moan through the empty rooms no matter how many drafts she seals, and every morning there's always at least one broken thing that Rey swears she fixed the day before. A patch of drywall crumbles back into nothing; a window is broken again, the spiderweb cracks entirely different from the shards she just swept away. One day she finds a man's boot lying on its side in the sitting room, covered in a light layer of dust, as if a few years suddenly passed overnight in this exact spot in the house. Eventually Rey makes it into a game, trying to spot the little acts of destruction that have emerged overnight like fairy rings, and she makes a point of fixing them right away.

Memories start to creep back to her, shy spectres peeking out from behind the rebuilt furniture and silently swinging doors. Rey starts to talk to the house—as if he's there, hiding somewhere, and could be coaxed into the light by the sound of her voice.

"I was seven, I think," she huffs as she fits her drill with another drywall screw. "There was a tire swing, out into the water, but I was too scared to jump in." She pushes a strand of hair out of her face; there's a knocking sound somewhere on the second storey, and Rey smirks as if it's a witty retort, leaning into the whirr of the drill. "You were so brave. That was what stood out; you weren't afraid of _anything_. You made me want to be that way too."

He has to be real. Rey can't remember his face, but she will never forget the moment when she realized that there existed a kind of courage that made the world seem bright and adventurous and shining. That's something she could never imagine on her own.

Everything is familiar when you have no memory. Everything is brand new when you can't trust the things you remember.

The days turn into weeks. Rey works from dawn until dark, coaxing the house back to life; she hums absently to herself as she works, lets fantasies and memories spill out of her in mumbles and shrieks, as if the house could swallow her secrets and seal them behind the walls. She eats trail mix out of a bag that never seems to run empty, and sits on the back porch with a beer to watch the sun set across the water. She talks to the house, and its creaks and groans feel like replies; she sleeps alone in the wrought iron bed, the rain pattering against the brand new window panes, and she dreams—

— _it was your house. You'd lived there since you were born, and I was so jealous I wanted to throw up._

(that’s what you remember?)

 _It instantly felt like home. It instantly felt like_ you _: striking, beautiful, layered with secrets, irresistible in every sense of the word._

(flatterer.)

_Your folks let us lie out on the sand all night and watch the meteor showers. We turned out the lamp and it was so dark you could barely see anything at all. I took your hand._

(yes. it was like nothing else existed, just you and me and the sky.)

_You were interesting. You seemed different from everyone else I'd ever met. You didn't treat me like a ghost; you saw me when it seemed like no one else would. I would have backflipped off the tire swing if it meant you would see me, but I never had to. You just did, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. That's how much you loved me._

(and what happened next?)

_I never saw you again—_

Ben has spent a lot of time doing as much as he can to erase the line between fantasy and reality; at first he did it in an attempt to escape his demons, and later on to completely obliterate as much of himself as possible. Neither endeavour has been particularly successful so far, but not for lack of trying, and the house is already unravelling the already-tenuous thread connecting him to reality.

For instance: Ben is completely sure that he sprains his ankle on when he falls from the stairs. He feels the joint wrench, hisses as pain spikes through him. He distinctly hears the echo of his voice as he yanks off his boot with an anguished yelp and tosses it in a random direction. He remembers thinking, in Snoke's voice: _you haven't even been here an hour and you're already in over your head_.

Ben has tried and tried, but he can never manage to forget that voice.

He makes it back upstairs with a pathetic crawl, wincing as splinters break off on his jeans; by the time he gets to the little bedroom, he's covered in a sheen of sweat and his teeth are chattering as shock sets in. The sleeping bag is still there, untouched, and Ben makes himself limp the long way around the foot of the bed before finally sinking onto the empty half of the mattress. He curls on his side, wrapping his arms around himself, and shuts his eyes—

( _"…want to play pirates?"_ )

—And the next thing he knows, it's morning. Ben squints in the too-bright sunlight, circling his ankle only to find absolutely no trace of injury or pain. The sleeping bag is gone, and there's a quilt in its place, pooled at Ben's lap; his hands creep along the lines of stitching, tracing an uneven zig-zag in the otherwise pristine lines, and allows himself a tiny smile.

_This is my quilt. My grandmother made it for me._

He shakes his head, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. Ben's grandmother died giving birth to his mother and his uncle; she probably didn't even know how to quilt. Still, as his fingers brush over the pattern of little spaceships on the fabric, he feels a lump form in his throat at the sheer vertiginous _deja vu_ of it all.

For the first week or two Ben wanders from room to room, drinking and drinking, running his fingers along every surface and crack while the emotions build up inside of him. When he's about to burst, he destroys something—usually whatever's closest, whether it's a dusty high-backed armchair or a patch of bare wall, smashing and tearing with whatever he can get his hands on. When all the fury has burned out of him, he stops, chest heaving, taking in air until all the knots in his shoulders unfurl and his head stops spinning and he has a moment of something that feels shockingly like clarity.

There's a creeping curiosity that begins to emerge along with the rage, like a helper fish swimming beside a whale. Ben drinks himself into a generalized haze, and he tries to catch a glimpse of gold-lit memories trapped somewhere in the fog: a girl, her hair flying out behind her as she runs, always out ahead of him, always daring him to follow. It's her house, and she has constructed an imaginary story for every single nook and cranny; Wagnerian epics unfold over the staircase bannister, and every creak and groan of the house can be credited to a particular ghost, each with extremely detailed backstories she can recite from memory. He wanders down a new hallway, slips into the master bedroom suite like a thief, and stands in the grubby ensuite bathroom for a very long time, his gaze fixed on a door recessed into the wall between the his-and-hers sinks. Eventually he pushes it open, the hinges creaking loudly in his ears as he surveys the cramped stone crawlspace inside, barely large enough to store some suitcases. 

_There’s a massive labyrinth behind the door. It goes on and on for a hundred miles in every direction. A minotaur lives inside._ He can hear it in her voice, yet he can’t remember how she sounds.

Ben closes his eyes.

( _"Now, count to a hundred..."_ )

"One," he whispers. "Two. Three. Four."

( _"Five!"_ )

The house is a singularity, the front door an event horizon that Ben can never uncross. He keeps intending to try: several times he thinks he ought to go for more supplies, because surely the handful of things he threw into his truck in a fit of pique won't be enough. But the days slide by, steady as a trickle of blood, and the fridge is somehow never empty.

There's almost definitely a ghost in this house.

Ben thinks he likes this manifestation, this slice of his mind that has pitched over into complete madness. It’s such a specific kind of haunting, totally unlike the other ways he’s gone insane, almost delightful. Almost peaceful.

"Rey." A name both familiar and foreign. A ferocious scream into the featureless void of memory where her face should be.

That night he curls up on the far side of the bed, this time facing in towards the middle of the mattress, and reaches out a tentative hand to rest where her heart would be if she was there beside him.

Ben is alone, always—but now he has a ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments would be very much appreciated! I plan to have the rest of this up within two weeks, so keep your eyes peeled! 
> 
> Come find me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/littlestarlost) and say hi!


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